Four Centuries WorthOf Falstaffs
Sep. 11th, 2024 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo The Globe Theatre has posted clips of Roger Allam as Falstaff. He's very good.
And I love how the configuration of the Globe allows for the big speeches- the ones where the character is thinking aloud- to be delivered at the audience- almost as if they were in conversation- which I think must have been how they were done in Shakespeare's day.
But
In the comments people are bandying about the phrase "greatest of all time" and that always makes me bristle.
In this case "all time" is a matter of well over four hundred years. How can we possibly know which of the noted Falstaffs- from Kempe to McKellen- carries off the palm?
Within living memory Ralph Richardson and Anthony Quayle have made the role their own. More recently we've had great Falstaffs from Simon Russell Beale and Anthony Sher....
And then there's Orson Welles' magisterial performance in Chimes at Midnight- the greatest Shakespearian movie ever made.....
And I love how the configuration of the Globe allows for the big speeches- the ones where the character is thinking aloud- to be delivered at the audience- almost as if they were in conversation- which I think must have been how they were done in Shakespeare's day.
But
In the comments people are bandying about the phrase "greatest of all time" and that always makes me bristle.
In this case "all time" is a matter of well over four hundred years. How can we possibly know which of the noted Falstaffs- from Kempe to McKellen- carries off the palm?
Within living memory Ralph Richardson and Anthony Quayle have made the role their own. More recently we've had great Falstaffs from Simon Russell Beale and Anthony Sher....
And then there's Orson Welles' magisterial performance in Chimes at Midnight- the greatest Shakespearian movie ever made.....
